Archive for Art

Here’s to the first week of development on TigerHawks! I’m getting back into 3D modeling and texturing, so I thought I’d cook up a quick reference fighter to use as FPO. Here are some step by step images of doing so. Next step, sticking it into Unity and hooking it up to the controller.

Wireframe model

Texture mapping

Textures!

Here are a couple of assets for the hero and enemy planes. I needed full turn-arounds to really give the player a wild ride when it comes to evading missiles, performing evasive maneuvers, and crash diving after being destroyed. There was a short time when I considered building this game in 3D, but I like the 2D look. I feel that it lends a little more soul to the game.

I now have initial build installing to PC, Android, OUYA and iOS. I’ll be using the Citrus engine to better handle asset management and Stage3D rendering. If Beards and Glory taught me anything, it’s that reinventing the wheel can be a colossal waste of time. Gamepad support is enabled on PC and OUYA, but Android and iOS will have the option of using controller overlays on screen. Not my favorite thing in the world, but what are you going to do… that’s the hell of building for touchscreen. Keep and eye open over the next few weeks for some rudimentary gameplay. This is all so exciting.

I heard a lot of good critiques from you guys stating that the female pilots weren’t feminine enough, so I’ve done a second pass at them and posed their previous iteration next to them for reference. The ladies now have more slender necks, wider hips, more slender arms, and less androgynous hair styles. Let me know what you think. That’s why this is called ‘Concept Art’.

So, I had a really interesting idea to add a different aspect of gameplay to TigerHawks. You would assume the role of a fighter pilot, and based on your interaction with other pilots in-between missions, you may receive boosts in abilities, weapons, missions, etc, OR… you may end up pissing off your wing man, thereby making them less eager to help you out with bogeys on your tail.

Here are some concepts of your fighter colleagues. Female pilots are coming soon.

Some people like seeing how I go about drawing this kind of art. Here is a quick Photoshop sketch of the first pilot. From the sketch, I traced and colored him into Flash, then did a TON of touch-ups to get his color, line-weight and proportions looking good. The other pilots use the same body (albeit scaled), and their faces are slightly perturbed from the original (hair color, facial structure, eye shape, mouth shape) until they have their own look.

Here’s some concept art on combat and landing on a carrier. The combat is more open than most shoot’em-ups, where you rely more heavily on radar to track your opponents. Landing ends up being a little mini-game, which helps you build experience. Building experience increases your rank, which allows you to fly more capable planes.